Will’s World: Long live the farmer’s faithful four-legged friend
@ Lee Boswell Photography One of my numerous daughters recently asked me: “What’s the best thing about being a farmer?”
I was a little preoccupied at the time, so I assured her that I’d think about it and give her a considered answer the following day.
There were many things that sprang to mind, such as being part of a tightknit community or getting to work close to nature every day.
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I even thought about going down the “space and freedom” route – something many of us probably take for granted – before ruling that out as being too convoluted to explain to an 11-year-old.
So, in the end, I decided to keep it simple, and the answer I came up with was dogs.
There can’t be many professions where people get to work as closely with dogs as we do, and I certainly can’t imagine being without them – not only for practical reasons, but for sentimental ones, too.
We have a slightly bananas but loveable and expressive collie on the farm. He’s very much like his owner, in fact, who happens to be our eldest daughter.
We also have a Jack Russell terrier called Tommy that I bought as a pup from fellow FW columnist Joe Stanley.
His vocabulary isn’t quite as beautifully mellifluous as Joe’s, but his hair is equally magnificent, even if it does manage to find its way onto every item of clothing I own.
Pocket rocket
The guardian of the doorstep, the terror of the tractor, the scourge of the postman, he was part of the family from the second I walked through the door with him tucked into my coat pocket – and he revelled in the attention he received from our numerous daughters from that moment on.
So much so that, in the way that Jack Russells have, he now presumes to be master of all he surveys. It’s Tommy’s house, we just live in it.
I’ve probably spent more time with dogs than I have with any human, and I’m sure that many of you reading this could say the same.
Those we’ve had in the past are still missed, and I’m not sure I’ve ever cried as much as I did when my beloved Taff the one-eyed wonder dog had to be put down some years back, with me holding him in my arms, after a long and happy life.
Collie wobble
I still smile when I remember the time I was hanging some washing out and, as was his habit, he’d climbed up on the garden wall behind me.
I suddenly heard a commotion and turned around to see that he’d slipped off the wall and was firmly wedged upside down in the middle of a shrub, head down and tail up.
You’ve never seen a more mortified expression on a collie’s face, and when I laughingly prised him out, he disappeared for a few hours from sheer embarrassment.
Our relationship with our canine friends is purer and less complex than it is with our fellow humans – perhaps even more so for those of us who work and live in close proximity on family farms.
We argue with each other, angrily say or do things in the heat of the moment (usually when moving cattle or sheep), and often cause deep hurt. These things tend to be forgiven, but perhaps not fully forgotten.
With dogs, there’s none of that. They don’t criticise you or question you in any way, they’re just happy to see you, whatever the circumstance.
The American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull said: “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.”
I couldn’t agree more.